It was the year 2000, the beginning of a new millennium, and I had decided that Halloween had to be special. So when I saw the notice for the open casting call in the local newspaper, it seemed like a gift from the gods . With its bright blue skies, sun-drenched beaches and waving palm trees, you might not think that Southern California offers much in the way of a proper setting for Halloween. But you'd be wrong. People around here don't just like Halloween; they're insane over it. They spend a king's random on costumes, decorations and props, and the celebration lasts a whole month. Major amusement parks like Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios are literally transformed into sprawling realms of Halloween horror complete with elaborate mazes and thousands of costumed monsters.

And then there is The Queen Mary.

Queen Mary is the last of the grand ocean liners of the 1930s that carried passengers in high style across the Atlantic before air travel sank the passenger trade. Now she's a tourist attraction and luxury hotel permanently moored in Long Beach harbor. But there's something about the Queen that makes her the perfect setting for Halloween.

The Queen Mary is haunted.

In fact, she isn't just haunted, she is reputed to be the most haunted place in Southern California. She sports a cast of wholly or partially manifested ghosts who have been regularly seen by a plethora of different people for years, and it isn't unusual in the least to find staterooms just made up by the housekeeping staff in total disarray when guests arrive. So when I read the casting call for Shipwreck, which is what Queen Mary's month-long Halloween "Terrorfest" is called, there was no way I could resist. Six monster mazes built in and around the ship. Four hundred and fifty monsters to haunt them. Thirteen nights to do the haunting. What a rush.

So there I was on a Friday night in mid-September, standing in front of the gangway leading into the Exhibition Hall aboard the ship along with a couple of hundred others, waiting for an audition for a role as a Shipwreck monster. At first it seemed a little intimidating, since all the others around me were a couple of decades younger than I was, and I could definitely feel those odd nervous "stage fright" butterflies that always seems to preceded any kind of performance or public speaking. But once we were inside, the feeling was replaced with the charge of pure excitement. We were lead below decks in groups of ten. Then, one by one, each of us was called into a darkened, cavernous room lit with dull green and blue lights and misty with clouds periodically billowing from a hidden fog machine. When my name was called, I walked around a bulkhead wall and faced a panel of five or six (it was hard to see exactly) maze supervisors in "Shipwreck" crew Tee shirts sitting behind a large table. After asking a few questions, their request was simple. Become a monster and give us your best scare.

I took a breath and then I sprang at them, arms held high and hands curled into claws, laughing like a maniacal ghoul. I was proud of that laugh. It was deep, loud and totally disturbed. I was hoping that the sudden "attack" would make them all jump. Of course, since they had been at it for days, they'd probably pretty much seen it all, so the best I can say is that I think I saw one of them flinch.

When I stepped back, one of them said, "Very nice. Thank you." And that was that. I walked back and joined the group. They hadn't seen what I'd done, but they were all impressed with the volume of my ghoul laugh. Before any of us had much time to think about it, a talent coordinator appeared from around the wall, dismissed a couple of people who hadn't made the cut, and then lead the rest of us upstairs to fill out W4 forms.

It was then that it occurred to me that I was a Halloween Monster.

What followed from there was a month of absolute Halloween delight. Beginning on Thursday, October 6, there had been 14 nights of performance. Shipwreck opened to the public at 7 p.m., but we were there at 5:30 so that we could be in costume, out of the make-up chair and into our spots in the mazes to greet our victims when they wandered inside. Once opened, the chaos continued until midnight -- 1 a.m. on Saturday's. Was it fun? You bet. Imagine that you're one of the six college students wandering through the creepy halls of the Myer house in "Halloween Resurrection." I was Michael Myers, popping out from where I was least expected to scare the wits out of you. Of course, instead of a knife or anything like that, I had a shaker can, which was a noisemaker that made a sound as startling as my ghoul laugh. Sometimes people would just jump. Others (and this was considered the ultimate scare) would fall down, sometimes in a whole group. Some would turn in a panic and run. These were my favorites. The chase was always, if you'll pardon the pun, a rush.

Even though, as you can imagine, it was incredibly fun, it could be at times physically exhausting. It was sort of like doing deep knee bends and wind sprints while screaming like a manic for six straight hours. But what the heck? Each one of my "victims" had paid 26 bucks for the experience of being a participant in a live horror movie. It was my job to make sure they got it. And, damn, was I good at it.

Starting off sort of thin, the crowds grew progressively larger as it drew nearer to Halloween night. While there was something memorable about each individual performance, basically every night was the same. When Halloween night finally arrived, it almost felt like a let down, since it seemed like there should be something unique about it. But there wasn't. Into make-up at 5:30; into the maze at seven. It seemed like it would just be another night of performance that would end with the thinning of the crowds, followed by a quick sweep of maze supervisors and security officers and then unceremoniously concluding with the announcement over loud speakers that the mazes were closed. Not much of a WOW finish.